Time To Get Away

{ October 1, 2009 @ 5:25 am } · { Uncategorized }

Umbrellas Everywhere

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Congratulations to the newly weds, Mr and Mrs. Kweder! Hope your having a relaxing and love filled honeymoon!

I am on a holiday break for about 1 week. It is the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. Also, the moon festival falls during this break. Everyone here walks the streets with fancy bags that have fancy boxes filled with moon cakes (dense fruit filled cakes). Andrea and I have been splitting a different moon cake for the past 3 nights, tasting all the flavors.

For the holiday Andrea and I will go to Huang Shan, which literally translates to Yellow Mountain. It is supposed to be the second most beautiful mountain in China. We will spend a day hiking up the mountain and on the way down stop at the hot springs. I ventured to the bus station to get the tickets, which is next to the railway station, adjacent to the metro station, in the rain. Most people got out of work early and headed right to the bus stations to escape from the crazy city of Shanghai for a few days. It was like nothing I had ever seen or experienced in my life. There was so much construction which caused the mass crowd of people to walk bunched together. Umbrellas were poking people, people were soaked, suitcases were dragged through piles of muddy water. Wet and overwhelmed I somehow made it up to the ticket booth (praying tickets were not yet sold out). I had my friend send me a text in Chinese so I could get the right tickets, which is the only way I could ensure to walk away with something. The whole way home I didn’t know if I even got tickets to the right place, but after checking the characters in my book, I am pretty confident that on Saturday I will arrive in Huang Shan.

My teaching schedule has been filled and consists of the following. On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday I will continue teaching my 18 wonderful, smart 4th graders. This is  more like a private after school class that the parents pay a very high price for. After the break, I will take on several general oral classes which are 35 minutes in length, once a week, and have any where from 30- 50 students in a class. I will be teaching just about all the primary grade levels. These classes aren’t as interactive and sometimes have behavior issues, but the time goes by so quickly. I will continue to work in the office on Fridays. It is just me and 2 other students along with an old New Zealand man who is kind of like our boss. At the office we design interactive classrooms and summer camp courses. It has been a lot of fun and will be great to add on my resume.

Don’t expect to hear much from me from October 3-7th as I will be away. Hopefully, I will have some pretty amazing photos for you when I get back! Until then…

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